Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Torture-Lovin', Draft-Dodgin' Dickster's Closest Brush With Combat

The Dickster is fast becoming the Worst Dumbo of them all. Not only does this blogger support Wanda Sykes' hope that The BFI's (Big Fat Idiot) kidneys fail, but now this blogger hopes that The Dickster goes hunting again with Harry Whittington and Ol' Harry returns the favor and peppers The Dickster with birdshot — at close range and full in the face. If this is (fair & balanced) fantasy, so be it.

[x Huffington Post]
Mr. Cheney, You Did Not Keep Us Safe
By Paul Begala

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If 3,000 Americans had been killed on your watch, in an attack that could have been prevented, perhaps you'd be a little hesitant to accuse anyone else of endangering America. And if you had advocated torture, and the torture produced false information that you used to mislead America into an unwise, unjust and unwarranted war, you might be a tad sheepish about defending the use of torture.

Not Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney has stepped up his attack on President Obama's security strategy, telling CBS's Bob Schieffer that Obama's refusal to use waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e., torture) endangers American lives.

The truth is the Bush-Cheney policies did not keep us safe, and Mr. Cheney is not a credible spokesman on issues of national security.

First, this awkward fact. When it came time to risk his hide to serve our country during the Vietnam War, Cheney got five draft deferments. He later told the Senate, "I had other priorities in the sixties than military service." John Kerry did not. Nor did John McCain. Nor General Colin Powell, nor General Jim Jones, nor General Wes Clark, nor Jim Webb. These warriors — and so many others — strongly oppose the use of torture. They were willing to die to protect America. It is insulting for a doughy draft dodger like Mr. Cheney to suggest they would endanger us today.

Indeed, the public record offers evidence that torture has endangered American security. Not only by breeding more terrorists, but by producing false intelligence — which Mr. Cheney and President Bush used to mislead America into invading Iraq.

The case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is instructive. Al-Libi was a senior al Qaeda operative captured trying to make his way out of Afghanistan into Pakistan. In US custody, he initially said he knew of no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, and, according to Newsweek, "he had difficulty even coming up with a story about the relationship between the two." An FBI agent urged that al-Libi be read his rights and be treated with respect, "as a shining example of what we feel is right." There was a practical, as well as moral, reason not to torture al-Libi: veteran interrogators believe establishing a rapport with a prisoner is the key to obtaining actionable intelligence. There are reports that, after hours of bonding with his FBI interrogator through discussions of religion, al-Libi provided useful information about alleged shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker" who was arrested just before 9-11.

But even after the bonding experience, al-Libi continued to deny a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. He was rendered to Egypt, where he faced certain torture. "You're going to Cairo, you know," a CIA agent reportedly told al-Libi at the airport. "Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f*** her."

So much for building rapport.

In Egypt, al-Libi was placed in a coffin-sized box for 17 hours, then beaten. Al-Libi cracked. He gave the information Cheney and his crowd most wanted: a direct link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Al-Libi, (who reportedly died this week in Libya), said Iraq had provided al Qaeda with training in the use of chemical and biological weapons.

Bingo! Vice President Cheney and others cited the information to justify the war in Iraq. Trouble is, it turned out to be false. As early as February, 2002 - just two months after al-Libi's "confession" -- the Defense Intelligence Agency reported to the White House and the National Security Council that it had doubts about al-Libi's charge. The DIA's Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary (DITSUM) all but destroyed al-Libi's credibility. The report said, in part:

"However, he (al-Libi) lacks specific details on the Iraqis involved, the CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) materials associated with the assistance, and the location where training occurred. It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.

"Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control." (Emphasis added.)

The timing here matters. In December, 2001 al-Libi, under torture, claims Iraq trained al Qaeda in chemical and biological weapons. Two months later, the Pentagon's intelligence agency says he was probably lying. And yet on September 25, 2002, Condoleezza Rice continued to spread the myth, telling PBS's "The News Hour," "We know too that several of the (al Qaeda) detainees, in particular, some high-ranking detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to al Qaeda in chemical weapons development." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, President Bush and several other leading Administration officials kept banging the al-Libi drum.

In January 2003, the CIA joined the chorus of skepticism about al-Libi's claim that Iraq trained al Qaeda in chemical and biological weapons, noting al-Libi "was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."

More than a year and a half after al-Libi's claim was discredited by the DIA, and nine months after it was poo-pooed by the CIA, Dick Cheney was still sighting it as Gospel, appearing on "Meet the Press" on the week of September 11, 2003 and telling Tim Russert, "We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW [biological weapons] and CW [chemical weapons], that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved."

It may well be that torture was used to advance the Bush-Cheney march to war in Iraq rather than to obtain intelligence about al Qaeda plots against the American homeland. A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue told McClatchy Newspapers, "Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies." Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

Next, consider this inconvenient truth: 9-11 happened on Mr. Cheney's watch. Tom Kean, the Republican co-chair of the 9-11 Commission, has said the attacks could have been prevented. He's right. That fact ought to weigh heavy on Mr. Cheney's conscience. As should these:

  • Before they took office, senior Bush administration officials were briefed repeatedly about the al Qaeda threat. Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told incoming National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, "I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.''

  • Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief under both Clinton and Bush, presented the new Bush-Cheney administration with a plan to roll back al Qaeda. He briefed Dr. Rice on the plan. Nothing. In February, 2001, he briefed Vice President Cheney on the plan. Nothing. Time magazine has reported, "Some counterterrorism officials think there is another reason for the Bush administration's dilatory response. Clarke's paper, says an official, "'was a Clinton proposal.'" If true, Bush and Cheney were allowing partisan politics to endanger America.

  • On May 8, 2001 — three months after being briefed by Clarke - Cheney was instructed to chair a task force on terrorism. It did not meet before the 9-11 attacks.

  • The FBI asked the Bush-Cheney Justice Department for58 million to beef up its domestic counterrorism capacity by hiring more translators, more field agents and more analysts. The Bush-Cheney Administration told the FBI no.

  • Congressional Democrats sought to shift 800 million in the Pentagon budget from Star Wars (the Bush-Cheney faith-based missile defense system) into counterterrorism. The Bush-Cheney administration threatened to veto the entire defense budget. Congressional Republicans sided with Bush and Cheney, and blocked the Democrats from transferring the funds.

  • In July, 2001, an FBI agent in Phoenix reported that Middle Eastern men - possibly al Qaeda — were taking flying lessons. He suggested that al Qaeda operatives might be trying to infiltrate the US civil aviation system. His warning was not acted on.

  • On August 6, 2001 President Bush received a classified briefing, the President's Daily Brief. On that day, the headline blared: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, Bush told the briefer, "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Dick Cheney, who has called the President's Daily Brief "the family jewels," presumably received the same briefing. Neither Bush nor Cheney acted on it. The "family jewels" were pearls before swine.

And the attack came. Over three thousand Americans were killed. In the heartache and rage that followed, Bush and Cheney instituted their "enhanced interrogation techniques." Uncovering a pending plot against the homeland was, doubtless, an important motivator. But the al-Libi case is a cautionary one. Rather than finding a ticking time bomb, the al-Libi torture may have been used to build a spurious case for war — a war that has weakened America.

Perhaps what's most galling about Mr. Cheney is how, without irony, humility or apology, he holds himself out as someone who has protected America when in fact he shirked his responsibility before 9-11 and misled us into war after. The closest Dick Cheney has ever come to fighting for America is when he shot his lawyer in the face. ♥

[Paul Begala was born in New Jersey and raised in Missouri City, TX. He graduated from John Foster Dulles High School (Sugar Land, TX). He earned both his B.A. and Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught briefly before going to work in the Clinton administration. While at the University of Texas, Begala was a candidate for student government president. However, he finished second to a write-in campaign for Hank the Hallucination, a character from the campus comic strip "Eyebeam". Following his loss, Begala wrote a tongue-in-cheek complaint to The Daily Texan, arguing "I cannot help but feel Hank's platform is illusory at best... I must say that the candidate himself lacks substance." Begala was declared the human winner, following a campus ruling that imaginary characters could not hold the position fo student government president. Currently Begala is teaching at the University of Georgia School of Law as a Sanders Political Leadership Scholar.]

Copyright © 2009 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

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Yes, Wobegon Boy, The Dumbos Are What They Are — "Major League Assholes"

Unaware that a nearby microphone was "hot" during a Labor Day 2000 campaign event, then Dumbo candidate George W. Bush made an off-hand remark to his running mate, Dick Cheney, that New York Times reporter Adam Clymer (out in the audience) was a "major league asshole." The anatomical obscenity fits the Dumbos perfectly and that is what they (especially Republican Women) are. Kudos to Wobegon Boy for nailing the Dumbos, but brickbats to Wobegon Boy for eschewing the rope and the torch on the question of war crimes trials. If this is (fair & balanced) ambivalence, so be it.

[x Salon]
Cheney: "We Are What We Are"
By Garrison Keillor

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Only one out of five Americans is willing to describe himself or herself as a Republican these days, and frankly I am tempted to become one of them. For the variety, and because they need me and because when I heard former Vice President Cheney talk about the meaning of Republicanism the other day -- "We are what we are," he said — I felt drawn to the simplicity and dignity of that. And I have never been a Republican, just as I've never been to South America, and that makes it tempting.

I look at pictures of Machu Picchu and think, "Why don't I get on a plane and go?" And I look at Dick Cheney and think, "This man needs friends." I voted for Obama, and will vote for him again in 2012, Lord willing, but in the meantime, it's a free country.

And it is just a whole lot more satisfying to be part of a militant righteous minority than to be in the anxiety-ridden confused majority -- to be a nightrider and ambusher rather than one of the people in the long wagon train — to be free to juke around and say wild stuff and know that it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference.

I went to a party the other day and heard the word "torture" and said that I didn't think we should prosecute the Bush lawyers who wrote those torture memos, and people jumped all over me like I was an escaped Nazi, so as long as I was persona non grata, I said some more stuff -- that America would be a better country if we took the vote away from people over 65 because they are selfish and greedy and the future of America is its young. People about dropped their drinks. And then I said that cat ownership is a sign of emotional immaturity and a good predictor of a tendency toward violent crime. I saw lifelong friends turn away in disgust. And you know something? I Don't Care. It felt good.

Liquor wasn't the cause. Crankiness was. And crankiness is the birthright of Republicans.

As Mr. Cheney said, "We are what we are. We're Republicans. We have certain things we believe in. And maintaining our loyalty and commitment to those principles is vital to our success." A good thing to say, and many a president of the Elks, the Odd Fellows, the Moose, the Knights of Pythias, and the Ancient and Mystic Order of Hoot Owls has said something similar: We will not bend our principles so as to please people we didn't like in the first place.

As Proust said in his "Remembrance of Things Past" — or, in French, A la recherche du temps perdu, his memoir of doing research, or recherche, as a temp at Purdue and of the mysterious Madeleine, who was one of the things he remembered, but don't let me give away the whole book, you should read it for yourselves — Nous sommes qui nous sommes: we are what we are, and that is the heart and soul of Republicanism today.

It is like one of those old men's choirs who get together one Friday night a month to sing "On the Road to Mandalay" and "Stout-Hearted Men" and "Finlandia" and "Kathleen Mavourneen" and "The harp that once through Tara's hall/ The sound of music shed,/ Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls,/ As if that soul were fled." Other choirs are ambitious to venture into African idioms and Ojibway chanting and Bulgarian nose flute music, but these old men gather in their old blue blazers and sing "Juanita" and, doggone it, I really, really love "Juanita," and it's about time I admitted this.

The old men's choirs were established by immigrants who had left their homeland, their families, their language, and come to live on a strange flat place called Minnesota, and they felt a great loneliness that could only be assuaged by standing shoulder to shoulder with other baritones and singing "Juanita." We are what we are.

And that's the Republican Party. Once a bulwark of All We Hold Dear, it's now a statistical subgroup. Somewhere in an Elks club, men gather at a banquet at which the speaker rips into those who would tear down the greatest healthcare system in the world and introduce socialism to the land of the free. And then they all sing "This Is My Country" just like in my childhood days. I might go, if I have that night free. ♥

[Garrison Keillor is an author, storyteller, humorist, and creator of the weekly radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." The show began in 1974 as a live variety show on Minnesota Public Radio. In the 1980s "A Prairie Home Companion" became a pop culture phenomenon, with millions of Americans listening to Keillor's folksy tales of life in the fictional Midwestern town of Lake Wobegon, where (in Keillor's words) "the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average." Keillor ended the show in 1987, and 1989 began a similar new radio show titled "American Radio Company of the Air." In 1993 he returned the show to its original name. Keillor also created the syndicated daily radio feature "A Writer's Almanac" in 1993. He has written for The New Yorker and is the author of several books, including Happy to Be Here (1990), Leaving Home (1992), Lake Wobegon Days (1995), and Good Poems for Hard Times (2005). Keillor's most recent book is a new Lake Wobegon novel, Liberty. His radio show inspired a 2006 movie, "A Prairie Home Companion," written by and starring Keillor and directed by Robert Altman. Keillor graduated (B.A., English) from the University of Minneosta in 1966. His signature sign-off on "The Writer's Almanac" is "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."]

Copyright © 2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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